Journal articles on the topic 'Presidents, united states, election, 1920'

Calvin Coolidge had a successful run in politics for over twenty years before ultimately becoming president of the United States in 1923. Throughout Coolidge's first term as president, he worked long, hard hours, was active in Congress, and maintained a strong relationship with the media. This changed, however, during the second term of his presidency. Less than a month after his second-term election, Coolidge's son died of blood poisoning. This traumatic event caused the President to enter into a deep depression. In his autobiography, Coolidge admitted that when his son died, the power and glory of the presidency went with him. His grief, which has since been coined pathological grief, had an effect on the President's mind, body and spirit. President Coolidge lost interest in his job and began sleeping fourteen hours a day, ultimately earning a reputation as one of the most ineffectual presidents ever to hold office. His depression rendered him incapable of making decisions, and as a result most of his duties were delegated to members of his Cabinet. Though the White House knew for four years that Coolidge's depression rendered him incompetent, he remained in office until the end of his second term.

The article analyzes the prospects for the 2020 presidential campaign after primary elections, which ended with the victory of incumbent President D. Trump in the Republican Party and former Vice-President J. Biden in the Democratic Party. A powerful external factor influencing the usual course of the presidential race has been the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the United States, which is the main element of the growing uncertainty about the possible outcome of the presidential election. An important consequence of the coronavirus pandemic was the gradual slide of the American economy into crisis as early as in the first quarter of this year. Economic turmoil in a year of presidential elections has been one of the most reliable indicators for upcoming change in the White House at least since 1920.

While the military and political accomplishments of World War I were clearly limited, the war, nonetheless, established a foundation for unparalleled economic growth in the United States during the 1920s. A significant consumer economy grew as many Americans worked fewer hours, earned higher salaries, invested in the stock market, and bought everything from washing machines to Model T Fords. This culture of consumerism in the 1920s changed the politics of American society and set the tone for American attitudes about economic political issues for decades to come. In the early 1920s, President Warren G. Harding's policies were generally conservative, especially regarding taxes, tariffs, immigration restriction, labor rights, and business regulation. Continuing Republican policies, President Calvin Coolidge included federal tax cuts and high tariffs. The expansive economy of the 1920s was fueled by the use of factory machine manufacturing and standardized mass production. The economic boom also resulted from the effects of World War I on technology, scientific management, the rapid increase in worker productivity, the psychology of mass consumption (with installment credit) behind the purchase of radios, motion picture tickets, electric appliances, and automobiles. Certainly, federal policies that supported big business with high tariffs, cutbacks in the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to regulate unfair trade practices, and the reduction of corporate and personal income taxes contributed to the boom as well. It was with this backdrop that Herbert Hoover and Al Smith squared off in the election of 1928. Hoover was born in Iowa and orphaned as a child. He began a career as a mining engineer soon after graduating from Stanford University in 1895. Within twenty years he had used his engineering knowledge and business skills to make a fortune as an independent mining consultant. In 1914, Hoover administered the American Relief Committee and during World War I he headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the U.S. Food Administration and was chairman of the Interallied Food Council. After the war he directed the American Relief Administration. Then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt said of Hoover in 1920, "He is certainly a wonder and I wish we could make him President of the United States. There could be no better one." In 1919 Hoover founded the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. As Secretary of Commerce in the Harding and Coolidge administrations from 1921 to 1929, Hoover was widely celebrated for his leadership. The man who had fed Belgium, had run the U.S. Food Administration, revolutionized the Department of Commerce, and ministered to victims of the 1927 Mississippi flood appeared the ideal candidate in 1928. Hoover seemed more practical than Woodrow Wilson, glowed with respectability compared to the Harding administration, was easily more inspired than Coolidge, and was generally considered more "purely American" than his Democratic opponent, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith.

The Americans adopted the title of First Lady for the wife of the President of the United States of America, and the president’s wife bore several titles until it crystallized and became known by this name, as Washington bore the title of Lady Washington in 1789, and she is the wife of President George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, The institutionalization of the first lady's office began within the executive branch of the White House when she appointed Mrs. Edith Roosevelt (1901-1909) as a social secretary to assist her in dealing with her official correspondence, and in organizing social affairs in the White House, thus becoming the first first lady to employ a private secretary With it, he receives a salary, and Edith Roosevelt worked to expand the eastern wing of the White House building to receive guests. In 1920, women were given the right to vote in the American elections according to the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, so that Florence Harding would be the first woman to vote for her husband for the presidency of the United States of America, and she played an influential role in the intervention to choose members of the Cabinet, especially the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury. The first lady's political thought evolved until she set her sights on the American presidency to lead the United States of America herself, and for the first time in American history Hillary Clinton revealed this when she ran for the US presidency on behalf of the Democratic Party in 2016, but lost it to Republican candidate Donald Trum

The 2020 elections in the United States’ 2020 elections were full of controversies despite recording the highest voters turnout since 1900. These electoral disputes are due to claims made by the then President, Donald Trump. Though the supreme court dismissed the claims of electoral fraud, the impact has left the American citizens more polarised at the national, state, and congressional levels. Scholars have argued that electoral fraud has existed since modern democratic development in the mid and late 19th century and is still occasionally an issue in some well-established democracies, while other scholars are not in support of such claims. Compared to the 2019 elections conducted in Nigeria, reports of electoral frauds have been on the front burner right from 1999. Its impact had made citizens have voters apathy and no trust in the democratic system in Nigeria. This paper used the qualitative research method to analyse the United States 2020 election cases of electoral fraud in an advanced democracy and diagnosed Nigeria’s 2019 and the United States 2020 elections. First, the study looked at the issues and challenges that have affected elections in both countries. Second, the paper used Game theory and the Conspiracy theory to assess the impact of a more proximate determinant of Election Day fraud; it examines Nigeria’s strategic efforts to combat electoral fraud using card reader technology. Finally, the paper concluded that there is no basis for comparison regarding elections in Nigeria and United States despite the hitches observed by the world in the United States elections. Electoral fraud will be inevitable regardless of how democratic a country claims to be if certain democratic tenets are not in place.

We seek to determine whether a United States President’s job approval rating is influenced by the Misery Index. This hypothesis is examined in two ways. First, we employ a nonlinear model that includes several macroeconomic variables: the current account deficit, exchange rate, unemployment, inflation, and mortgage rates. Second, we employ probit and logit regression models to calculate the probabilities of U.S. Presidents’ approval ratings to the Misery Index. The results suggest that Layton’s model does not perform well when adopted for the United States. Conversely, the probit and logit regression analysis suggests that the Misery Index significantly impacts the probability of the approval of U.S. Presidents’ performances.

AbstractOnly a few years ago, it was a widespread belief that globalisation would trigger processes of democratisation worldwide. However, even old and established democracies such as the United States have recently revealed serious weaknesses. This article shows that the US election system is heavily distorted and recommends profound and transparent Electoral College reforms in the election of US presidents. Furthermore, the article highlights the implications the challenges facing American democracy have for Europe.

The article is devoted to the study of the influence of economic and geopolitical considerations on US policy in Chile during the 1970 presidential election and on the decision of The Nixon administration to overthrow the legitimately elected President S. Allende through a military putsch. It is shown that neither Chile’s political nor economic ties with the Soviet Union were the main Reasons for this decision. The main reasons for the active US invasion of internal Chilean political life were fears in the American establishment about the fate of the revenues of American campaigns from mining in Chile, as well as geopolitical considerations for which the overthrow of the democratic regime in Chile could be a response to the Soviet Union for supporting the Communist regime in Cuba

Donald Trump’s surprising 2016 election as President of the United States was unusual both in the set of states he won and in clearly winning the electoral vote while decisively losing the popular vote. His victory is somewhat less surprising given recent Republican domination of American politics, a context which provides Trump both leadership opportunities and constraints. A large factor in Trump’s rise is the leader–follower dynamics of crowds, seen throughout time, which enabled him to win an uncritical and devoted following. An important part of that dynamic was Trump’s validation of the social identity of the white working class in the United States, especially in comparison to Hillary Clinton’s both implicit and explicit denigration of that base of Trump support. Trump’s identity story for his base is unusually exclusive, highlighted by ingroup vs. outgroup hostility. His appeal is compared to inclusive identity stories successfully related by other US presidents, which suggest how future leaders might effectively touch “the better angels of our nature.”

Presidents often lack legislative majorities, but situations of opposition-party majorities (“divided government”) are much less common outside the United States. The president's party's share of seats tends to increase in early-term elections but decline in later elections. Thus opposition majorities often result after midterm elections. Opposition majorities rarely occur in elections held concurrently with the presidential election but are more likely to do so if legislators enjoy electoral independence from their parties due to features of electoral laws.

Conventional wisdom and some research indicate that macroeconomic policies follow cycles corresponding to political, as well as economic, forces. Using vector autoregression analysis, I test three models of monetary policy determination for the United States, 1953–1984: the electoral cycle model (that reelection motivations on the part of presidents create a policy cycle), the party differences model (that policy changes reflect revolving presidential party administrations), and the referendum model (that changes in presidential approval create, in effect, a continuing referendum, allowing presidents to monitor their success and change macroeconomic policies when necessary). Analysis shows that monetary policies, as measured by the monetary base and short-term interest rates, respond to the election cycle and presidential approval (although the effect on macroeconomic outcomes is ambiguous). Party differences are found in real income but are not very significant in other variables.

The following paper deals with US policy toward the Baltic states at two different time periods (1918–20 and 1989–91) and by two very different presidents (Woodrow F. Wilson and George H. W. Bush). The first period represented the time that saw the emergence of the United States on the world stage. Woodrow Wilson seemingly advocated self-determination as was understood by a number of his advisers at the Peace Conference, but eventually decided to support the unity of Russia as part of an anti-Bolshevik policy. During the second period, George H. W. Bush negotiated a settlement to end another conflict, the Cold War. While self-determination of the Baltic states (on the basis of the US non-recognition policy) was not of prime importance for the US, it nevertheless was brought up at very summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and came to be linked to the resolution of economic issues between the two major powers. Ultimately the restoration of independence was decided by developments in the Soviet Union, but US policy made the Baltic question an international issue and helped resolve it peacefully.

In the postwar United States the president's party has always done worse in the midterm congressional elections than in the previous congressional election. Republican administrations exhibit below-average, and Democratic administrations above-average, economic growth in the first half of each term, whereas in the latter halves the two see equal growth. Our rational expectations model is consistent with these two regularities. In presidential elections, voters choose between two polarized candidates. They then use midterm elections to counterbalance the president's policies by strengthening the opposition in Congress. Since presidents of different parties are associated with different policies, our model predicts a (spurious) correlation between the state of the economy and elections. Our predictions contrast with those of retrospective voting models, in which voters reward the incumbent if the economy is doing well before the election. Our model performs empirically at least as well as, and often better than, alternative models.

This essay builds upon earlier studies of the QAnon superconspiracy theory by applying cultural criminology as a framework to investigate the significance of QAnon and the events that facilitated the rise of the superconspiracy and the associated political movement. QAnon has had multiple impacts that should be of interest to criminologists. In the United States, QAnon was involved with the 2020 election, as adherents believed messages posted by "Q" referred to President Trump as a messiah and Trump tacitly acknowledged the group. In addition, QAnon has international influence, most recently in the "trucker" convoy in Canada and anti-vaccine protests in New Zealand and Germany. This essay utilizes cultural criminology to introduce the framework of relative deprivation theory and emphasize the importance of the gaze from above and below in structuring relative deprivation. In addition, we discuss the role of cultural understandings of victimization in shaping ideology and physical frameworks used by QAnon.

On April 30 the United States and the World marked the 100th day in office of Donald Trump as President of the United States. The first 100 days are considered as a key indicator of the fortunes for a new President’s program. This article briefly reviews the 2016 campaign and election, the 11 week transition period, his first 100 days, a brief examination of both American-Russian relations and Sino-American relations, and lastly, what the future bodes for each under a Trump Presidency. The 100 Day period has been chaotic, shifting, and at times incoherent. He has made 180 degree shifts toward many major issues, including Russia and China, which has only confused numerous world leaders, including Presidents Putin and Xi. There has been a definite disconnection between what Trump says about Russia, and what his advisors and cabinet officials say. So far Trump has conducted a highly personalized and transactional foreign policy. All is up for negotiation at this a huge turning point in American foreign policy, the greatest one since 1945. Given all the world’s instabilities today, a rapprochement between the United States and Russia is a truly worthwhile objective, and should be strongly pursued.

The Muslim Brotherhood has always been very controversial. Since its creation in the late 1920s, it has been at the heart of Egypt’s most important upheavals and struggles. As a Pan-Islamist religious and social movement, its self-stated aim is “Islam is the solution”. During the early days of the so-called “Arab Spring,” the movement was the readiest political power to go through the electoral process and achieve victory far more than any other party. This was due to its long history in charity and social services and the well-organized preachers who are deeply rooted in Egyptian society. The sharp victory in the 2011 Legislative Elections was not enough for the movement. Backed by his Islamist allies and most of the youth who participated in the “Revolution,” Mohamed Morsi ran for president and won in 2012. One year later, he was ousted after a “second uprising” in the streets of Cairo and many other Egyptian cities. Another crackdown was inevitable and the movement went back to clandestinity. Amidst all these events, the United States under President Obama could not distance itself from what was going on. In the beginning, the US administration was divided over the popular uprisings in the whole region and in Egypt in particular. In Egypt, the Obama administration backed Morsi during his presidency although his movement was known to be traditionally against Western interests in the region. Many Egyptian politicians were into the idea that the cabinet was compromised and officials with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood were influencing the decision-making process. When it was time, the US government has leaned into the army which is the only institution that guarantees the peace treaty with Israel. The aim of this paper is to provide an understanding to the blur in the US stance before and during the period when the army took over. It explains the major interests which did not make the issue of democracy a priority and led to the disposal from the Muslim Brotherhood.

What characterizes the dynamics of presidential popularity? Research based on the United States of America finds popularity exhibits an almost law-like cyclicality over a president’s term: high post-election “honeymoon” approval rates deteriorate before experiencing an end-of-term boost as new elections approach. We contend that cyclical approval dynamics are not specific to the USA, but rather characteristic of presidential systems more generally, despite heterogeneity in their socio-economic and political contexts. Testing this proposition requires overcoming a key empirical problem: lack of comparable data. We do so by employing time-series inputs from 324 opinion surveys from a new publicly available database—the Executive Approval Database 1.0—to craft quarterly measures of popularity across 18 Latin American contemporary presidential democracies. Our analysis strongly confirms the cyclical approval model for the region. The conclusion identifies avenues for future research on the relationships across approval, presidentialism, and electoral, institutional, and socio-economic factors afforded by the new data resource we present here.

The general public in the United States has been inundated during the 1980s and early 1990s with information about narcotics abuse, trafficking, and control. From journalists, politicians, law enforcement officials, and the medical community, the American populace ascertained that illicit drug use and trading have recently become among the nation's most intractable problems. Repeatedly, those sources reported that the consumption of cocaine, especially “crack”, had reached epidemic proportions, that drug-related violence overran the country's major cities, that youths should (according to First Lady Nancy Reagan) “just say no” to the purveyors of addictive substances, and that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had declared war on drugs. Americans learned too that only partial gains had been made against narcotics abuse and trafficking. Such a realization proved difficult for them to fathom following the 1988 presidential election campaign with its antidrug rhetoric, after the enactment by Congress of the Omnibus Drug Act of 1988 (which created a cabinet level “drug czar”—the director of the office of National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President), and given the stormy two-year tenure of William Bennett in that post. Of greater concern by 1991, evaluations of the nation's antinarcotics endeavors by the press, government authorities, and other informed observers indicated that the fundamental strategy of drug control was in dispute. Notwithstanding compelling arguments which insisted that the narcotics problem would continue until the domestic demand for drugs ended, federal government efforts have generally sought to eliminate foreign narcotics production and the smuggling of those substances into the United States.

Subject. The article considers cyclical changes of economic policy by U.S. presidents, based on either the neoclassicism concept or the postulates of neomercantilism. This struggle has become especially acute and dramatic for the economies of the rest of the world since 2016, after the election of D. Trump as President of the United States. Objectives. The aim is to evaluate the impact of the economic policy pursued by U.S. presidents according to the methods of various economic schools, on the dynamics of GDP. Methods. The study rests on classification of methods for the American economy over the past hundred years and their comparison with statistical data on U.S. GDP growth rates for this period, calculation of correlation coefficient between these economic indicators. Results. The correlation coefficient between the economic policy pursued by U.S. presidents and the GDP growth rate was equal to 0.87. This is indicative of significant influence of economic policy on the U.S. GDP dynamics. The highest rates of economic growth were observed, when the U.S. economy was managed according to mercantilist principles. Conclusions. The probability of a new return to the mercantilist methods of managing the U.S. economy and final rejection of globalization policy is quite high. The theoretical understanding of this process will help make adequate decisions in the practice of interstate relations, taking into account the uneven economic growth rates of developed liberal and developing mercantilist countries.

Courses in American Government, including those which focus specifically on the presidency, rarely grant much attention to the period of transition that follows the election of a new president. That is unfortunate, for the transition period reveals in acute detail some of the enduring difficulties presidents encounter in trying to impose their influence on the structure and performance of the executive branch. Transitions especially highlight the awkwardness of the in-and-outer system of leadership selection in the United States and should be regarded, therefore, as highly valuable sources of instruction.This brief essay looks at the principal problems confronted by new administrations in staffing the executive branch. It identifies the contours and complexities of those problems and then suggests some options for coping with them. These options, and others which students might propose, should invite vigorous debate and discussion.A modern president-elect who has not prepared in advance for staffing an administration will suffer serious and harmful delays in launching a new presidency. It is critically important that personnel identification begin before the election. Careful planning should afford opportunities for the new President to anticipate the normal problems of transition personnel selection and to prepare to cope with them.

Elections are the hallmarks of democracy; they also serve the purpose of peaceful change in government and confer political legitimacy on the government. Viewed from this prism, elections represent the expression of the sovereign will of the people. However, the conduct of elections in a plural society like Nigeria is often fraught with animosities and violence. Failing is the process to satisfy the test of popular participation and legitimacy. At the core of this bitter contest is the struggle for power by factional elite groups perceived as representing ethno religious and regional interest. Electoral seasons more than anytime else reveals the fragility and soft underbelly of the Nigerian state. The country’s electoral history is replete with narratives of flawed and disputed elections that have turned violent, resulting in numerous fatalities and reversing previous attempts at democratic consolidation. The 2015 general election was unprecedented in the annals of the country because for the first time an entrenched and incumbent party was defeated at the polls, and the country witnessed a peaceful alternation of power between contending political parties thereby fulfilling one of the preconditions for democratic consolidation. A tensed pre-election political atmosphere occasioned by the activities of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, that then controlled a large swath of Nigeria’s territory and a fragmented elite divided along ethno-religious and regional lines foreshadowed the election. Shuttle diplomacy by the United States secretary of state and the constitution of body called ‘National Peace Committee’ comprised of Kofi Anan, the immediate past secretary general of the United Nations, past presidents of Nigeria and leading clergymen and the postponement of the election date by six weeks before the electoral management body could deliver an election whose outcome was accepted by the contending political parties and averting the prediction of an apocalyptic endgame. This study seeks to engage the factors that make conduct of elections in Nigeria to be violent prone and undermine attempts at institutionalising a democratic tradition. The methodology is qualitative in approach, relying on secondary data from books, journal articles and newspaper commentaries.

The article provides a comparative legal analysis of the constitutional statuses of the Presidents of the Republic of Kazakhstan (ROK) and the United States. The study was conducted according to the relevant provisions of the Constitution of the studied countries and according to the criteria: form of placement; form of government; presidential elections and powers; censorship established for presidential candidates, etc. The peculiarities of the legal status of the institution of the presidency of these countries were noted, including the following issues: participation in the formation of the upper house of the Parliament, ministries and other government bodies; interaction with the Parliament and judicial branches of the Government; powers in the field of defense and security; international relations; lawmaking, etc. Purpose: to reveal the content of the legal status of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, to reveal the doctrinal, specific, normative legal status of the head of state, to analyze the features of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, his normative and actual status. The article evaluates the constitutional and legal status of the President of Kazakhstan in relation to the administrative and legal status, analyzes the status positions of the ‘President’ as the head of the state and the highest official performing the functions of public administration in the context of constitutional foundations. Methodology: the methodological basis of the research as well as the work is based on a set of scientific methods of phenomena cognition: comparative Jurisprudence, the method of dogmatic analysis of legal acts, etc., which made it possible to identify the problems of the constitutional and legal status of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, to establish the fact of combining elements of the super-presidential form of the government. The results and their significance: therefore, based on the results of a comparison between the presidential institutions of the United States and Kazakhstan, the right to address the Parliament, the participation of the Senate in the appointment, approval, election of officials proposed by the President, the right of veto, the General Command of the Armed Forces, one person cannot be a president for more than two consecutive terms.

While I served in the White House, [as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Policy and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff from 1977–81], Ph.D. economists occupied the positions of Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Treasury, Director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, the President's anti-inflation adviser, Chairman and Council Members of the Council of Economic Advisers, and many other senior positions throughout the government. Yet we presided over an economy with double-digit inflation and interest rates and a recession. Presidents of the United States and their White House Staff members expect economists to be omniscient prophets of the future course of the economy, unerring economic policy advisers, and teachers of the mysterious science of economics to often distracted pupils. They expect their economists to provide an economic blueprint for high growth, low inflation, and a guaranteed re-election—but without offending any important constituencies. What is the appropriate role for economists in the White House? What can they realistically be expected to do?

The purpose of the article is to describe the 2022 South Korean presidential election against the backdrop of a paradigm shift and to show the challenges and directions of Yoon Suk Yeol’s new administration. The author focuses on the research problems present in the new South Korean politics. Elements of change and continuity, which were also present in previous administrations are highlighted. In May 2022, Yoon Suk Yeol was sworn into the South Korea’s highest office. Yoon’s win in the presidential election ended a trend in which a decade of progressive rule was followed by a change to conservative rule. Since 1998, progressive and conservative presidents have alternated every two terms. The minimal difference in votes in favor of the conservative candidate reflected the divisions and social preferences of Koreans who favored a change from progressive to conservative government. The results of the 2022 presidential election revealed the polarization of South Korean society. Yoon will face a series of difficult challenges. In domestic politics, he must confront the housing crisis, widespread dissatisfaction with economic inequality, and generational tensions, among other issues. Yoon will also be challenged by the parliamentary majority currently held by the Democratic Party in the National Assembly. In foreign policy, South Korea’s new president advocates strengthening the alliance with the United States and cooperation with the Quad countries; he promises to improve relations with Japan, and to take steps toward South Korea playing a greater role in the world. In his inter-Korean policy, on the other hand, Yoon follows the traditional position of the conservatives, pledging to strengthen a policy of deterrence against acts of aggression and provocation by North Korea.

Chile is one of the most developed countries in Western hemisphere. It has a high economic potential and a comparatively stable political system. Election of a new president will not only influence domestic af-fairs but also affect Santiago’s relations with main global actors, first and foremost, with the United States. After the end of Cold War Washington utilized its resources in Eurasia which generated a leadership vacuum in Latin America. The US positions in the region were weakened during Trump’s presidency. The latter did not only fail to propose an alternative path of interregional development but used rhetoric of ultimatums towards Latin-American countries. Renewal of relations with regional powers is one of the main goals of the Biden administration. Cooperation with Chile could optimize White House’s prospects not only in restoration of its regional influence but in the context of the great power competition. Economic development and solid institutions may make Santiago effectively contain China’s influence in the region. A new “Pink tide” will deepen Sino-American rivalry in Latin America and force the United States to widen its policy-toolkit.Partnership is relevant in several spheres: economic, strategic and cultural. The latter two are easier to realize because presidents’ capacity lets them simplify implementation of projects from those fields notwithstanding absence of legislative power’s support. Nevertheless, international context characterized by conflict in Ukraine and economic instability does not allow Washington to work out a long-term and efficient strategy towards Latin America in general and Chile in particular.

Abstract Although historians and political scientists have long acknowledged the significant place of immigrants in American political history, the role of “alien suffrage” has not been well appreciated, and gaps remain in the scholarship about the nature of its practice. How extensively was “alien voting” practiced and what were its effects? This study addresses these questions by examining eleven of the forty states that allowed non-citizens to vote before obtaining citizenship. These states, located in the Midwest, South and West, were selected because immigrants comprised a significant proportion of their total population and allowed alien suffrage for an extended period of time (1848–1920). We develop estimates of non-citizen voters and examine ethnic voting patterns in these states to gauge their impacts on partisan dynamics in gubernatorial elections. Our findings show non-citizens voted and factored into election outcomes, furthering the incorporation of European immigrants. We also shed light on the unsavory side of alien suffrage, which contributed to a form of settler colonialism and functioned to block or delay the enfranchisement of African Americans and women. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for our understanding of immigrant political incorporation in American political history, as well as for contemporary debates about the revival of the legal practice of non-citizen voting in the United States.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the idea of the emergence and evolution of the FRUS publication as the gold standard of official documentary history, to analyze the main periods of the collection's development, focus on the legislative basis for the publication of the series and the problems of understanding the FRUS series as an example of the transparency of the American government. Analyzing the scientific work on the topic of the study, the author draws attention to two aspects: the lack of interest in this collection in the Ukrainian scientific community and the rather limited interest among the world scientific community. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, a systematic approach, and relevant general scientific methods such as problem-chronological and information analysis. The scientific novelty is determined by showing the evolution of the collection, its functional orientation, and the proposed periodization of the publication's development. Conclusions: The publication of the collection began in 1861 and was viewed by Congress not only as a means of informing the public but also as a tool to control the executive branch. No clear criteria for publishing or removing materials were made public, although there was a consensus on which materials should not be published, namely those “that would be detrimental to the public good”. The publications of the period 1861-1905 did not take into account the fact of inconvenience to foreign governments, American diplomats, or US presidents. It is emphasized that the publications of the period 1920-1945 underwent profound changes in purpose, production, design procedures, and target audience. This period is associated with the appearance of the first official order that provided for mandatory historical “objectivity” and served as a charter for the series (with minor changes) until 1991. It is pointed out that the content of the collection and the speed of its appearance were seen as direct evidence of the US government's adherence to the policy of transparency and accountability. As a result, between 1920 and 1945, the State Department released 56 volumes, covering the years between 1913 and 1930. It is noted that gradually the balance between transparency and national security became increasingly difficult. The FRUS series has been and remains a vital resource for the public, academia, political scientists, and others. After the end of World War II, the State Department redefined the transparency paradigms of the 20th century. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the imperatives of the Cold War affected the timeliness of publication, as well as the decision-making process for declassifying U.S. government documents. At the beginning of the Cold War, the FRUS series was 15 years behind on average; by the 1980s, this gap had doubled to about 30 years. The volumes were also subjected to greater scrutiny by the U.S. government before being released. This was partly a result of expanding bureaucratic frameworks and partly a consequence of the Cold War. The publications of the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries moved away from the functional component of the nineteenth century and instead became a means of a certain historical transparency. The FRUS publications will allow us to analyze not only the evolution of US diplomatic skill but also the policy of openness as a key element of democratic development.

The election of Donald Trump can be examined in the context of the rise of authoritarian populist, nationalist, and anti-globalist movements throughout the world due to neoliberal policies, job outsourcing, and the influx of immigrants. Unlike preceded presidents, Trump had no previous political or military experience; instead, he popped out from the business world and entertainment culture. The paper’s endeavour is twofold: first, to trace the evolution of the economy from Mercantilism to Trumponomics, which is a mixture of mercantilism globally and neoliberal flavoured with classical crony capitalism of Dickens’ Bounderby domestically to appease his voters and not to upset his wealthy friends. The second is to draw a comparison between Donald Trump and his counterpart Josiah Bounderby, a stark example of capitalism. The paper will not only trace his ascension to the very pinnacle of world power as the president of the United States but also his fall, testing the allegations of the clown prince of American politics and whether or not he betrayed his anti-globalist followers in pursuing his and big corporates interests. Like his counterpart, Mr Bounderby, who built his image on his rags-to-riches fairy tale, Trump built his own as a man of deals. While the former left no progeny and his fortune was whittled down by the court, the latter was proved to be the worst deal-maker ever. He did more harm than good and produced nothing but a faceless economy and a nation bitterly divided.

The paper examines a complex web of domestic and external issues which have both provoked a systemic crisis in Venezuela and, at the same time, determined its specificity in comparison with the wave of protests sweeping across Latin America in 2019.The authors conclude that the escalation of the conflict in Venezuela was caused not only by the standoff between the legislative and the executive branches of the government, but also by the split of the whole society into proponents and opponents of ‘socialism of the 21st century’. The contradictions have led to the formation of the parallel branches of power: two presidents, two parliaments and two supreme courts (one of them in exile) which de facto coexist in the country and each claims exclusive rights and legitimacy.The authors also stress that the situation in Venezuela has obvious regional consequences. The miscalculations of the incumbent president were used in election campaigns in other Latin American countries and became one of the reasons for the defeat of left candidates, the subsequent ‘right drift’ leading to the isolation of the republic. The new political landscape has also affected the architecture of integration associations, which failed to develop a unified position toward the Bolivarian regime.Furthermore, in a current heightened state of international tensions Venezuela has turned into a theatre of international rivalry and conflict involving all the key subjects of world politics. The United States, China, Russia and the European Union compete for the energy resources of the country and pursue their own strategic interests. The inability or unwillingness of external forces to reach compromise and to bring the parties to the negotiating table can pose a threat to peace and international security.As a result, Venezuela has become one of the most turbulent countries in the region. At the same time, the repeated outbursts of protest waves are significantly different from popular uprisings in other Latin American states. In the worst-case scenario, a constantly worsening situation may result in a social explosion which threatens to make the Bolivarian Republic another hot spot of the planet.

Parish boundaries: the Catholic encounter with race in the twentieth-century urban north. By John T. McGreevy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pp. vi+362. ISBN 0-226-55873-8. $27.50.What parish are you from? A Chicago Irish community and race relations. By Eileen M. McMahon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. Pp. xii+226. ISBN 0-8131-1877-8. $32.95.The Boston Irish: a political history. By Thomas H. O'Connor. London: Northeastern University Press, 1995. Pp. xixx+363. ISBN 1-55553-220-9. £23.50.The New York Irish. Edited by Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Pp. xxii+743. ISBN 0-8018-5199-8. $45.00.The public city: the political construction of urban life in San Francisco, 1850–1900. By Philip J. Ethington. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xvi+464. ISBN 0-8018-5199-8. £40.00.Civic wars: democracy and public life in the American city during the nineteenth century. By Mary P. Ryan. London: University of California Press, 1997. Pp. xii+376. ISBN 0-520-20441-7. £16.15.Few events have had a greater impact on urban America than the Irish Catholic exodus, which eventually brought one third of the Irish to the United States. Irish Catholics were the first ethnic group to immigrate in large numbers to America's cities and to experience overt discrimination. Overcoming that discrimination, they emerged as the consummate political force in urban America. In the late nineteenth century, Irish politicians and their political machines controlled a majority of America's large cities, long before the election of John F. Kennedy as president brought the Irish political presence to the national stage. At once integrated into American culture and proud of their ethnic culture and identity, the Irish in America continue to have a clear cultural presence in both positive and negative ways, in many American cities. The Irish hold the best parades, but sometimes refuse to allow Irish homosexuals the right to parade in them. The Irish are proud of their neighbourhoods, sometimes to the point of physical violence.For the first time in over two centuries, however, Irish immigration patterns have reversed. Over the last two years, 13,000 more Irish moved back to Ireland from America than went the other way. This watershed change provides a good opportunity to reconsider the history of the Irish in America's cities, as the authors of some recent publications demonstrate. This review will examine six current studies that illuminate the Irish urban experience in America. The authors of these histories document the role of the Irish and the Catholic church in urban racial disturbances in the twentieth century; they reconsider the importance of the Irish to urban political culture; and they explore the contested meanings of being Irish in urban America.

The article analyzes major trends in domestic, social, economic, trade and foreign policy of the USA in 2021. The past year turned out to be unexpectedly successful for the Democratic administration of Joseph Biden, who managed to use his party's almost maximum control over the federal government to lay the legislative foundation for the implementation of one of the priority items on the election agenda and began the transformation of the foreign policy strategy of the US global leadership. His first year was really eventful — in the difficult conditions of the ongoing pandemic, he opened a new stage of social and foreign policy transformations. The current US President came to the White House with a large-scale social agenda, on which the Democratic Party has been working all 4 years of Trump's presidency in anticipation of revenge. The ambitious plans, in addition to fighting the pandemic, included the subsequent reform of the healthcare system launched by Barack Obama, ensuring racial equality and social justice, updating the country's long and seriously worn out infrastructure, launching a ‘green transition’ and reforming the country's immigration system. All these reforms are long overdue and really needed. However, since the beginning of the XXI century the reform efforts of presidents traditionally produce very little results — an average of one large-scale reform for each president. The list of changes required by the country is growing, but the speed of its implementation is only falling. The reason for this slowdown lies in partisan polarization and radicalization, which grew rapidly during the same period, shrinking the space for compromise, a key condition for reform efforts under the American separation of powers. The Democrats with J. Biden won their chance for a blitz in 2020, however, not only the Republicans, whose numerical minority made it possible to worry less about their resistance, but also the unity of the Democratic Party itself, were on the way to its implementation. Over the past four years, the left wing of the party has expanded its membership in Congress and has become a powerful force, ready to resist even its own president. The large-scale social agenda proposed by J. Biden during the election campaign, which implies the expansion of the social responsibility of the state, eventually caused serious objections from both left-wing Democrats and Republicans. The first considered it insufficient, for the second it offered too revolutionary changes. Biden's centrist position in the face of radicalization proved to be more of an obstacle to pushing forward reforms than an opportunity to implement them. As a result, all participants had to compromise. Paradoxically, radicalization, which destroyed opportunities and room for compromise, itself became a compromise factor in a situation where changes could be too drastic for both the government itself and society. Finally, the Biden administration was able to seize a unique moment of democratic control over federal power to implement an important part of its social agenda. Biden's original plan to reform the country's infrastructure has seriously changed over this year of cross-party agreements, but in general, the adopted ‘Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’ launches large-scale changes in several areas at once, on which the further development and competitiveness of the United States depend. Despite a relatively quick recovery, the US economy continues to face major challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic: high inflation and disruption in production chains. The new model for maintaining and expanding US global leadership, formulated and gradually implemented by Joe Biden’s administration, is based on the creation of a single ideological and technological space of allies in opposition to China and other authoritarian states challenging the US. The anti-Chinese vector determines the main directions of the US foreign policy strategy: returning to traditional allied relations, expanding alliances, ending protracted military campaigns, minimal strategic involvement in long-term conflicts, targeted interaction with competitors and adversaries, and controlled confrontation. This article is a result of a collective multi-aspect research of transformations taking place in the US on a real-time basis. The analysis is built methodologically on the systemic approach to studying American political, social and economic trends, both domestically and on an international level.

This article is a critical input to the national and international debate on Gun Control and the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution since 1791. Auspiciously, the paper interrogates the historical, ideological, and socio-cultural roots of the Gun Rights from Medieval Europe to modern America as well as its implications for homeland security in 21st Century American society. The whole legalistic, philosophical and socio-cultural rationale for and against the Gun Control Question in mainstream American politics elicits many questions: Why has it been legislatively infeasible to address the frailties inherent in the 2nd Amendment texts? Is the Second Amendment immutable amid post-1791 realities? Has morality lost its place in American politics? Was the rights prescribed under 2nd Amendment vested on the individuals as construed impliedly or on the people as expressly stipulated in the constitution? And why has America with the most sophisticated military and intelligence architecture in the world failed to demonstrate the capability to contain sectarian killings in the land? The paper submits that the Gun Control Debate lays bare, one of the internal cleavages within the American political and social system, a nation so admired not just by her military, economic and diplomatic clout but also by the valued she stresses and defend world over: freedom, justice, equality and global peace, ideals for which the United States supplanted pax-Britanica for Pax-Americana. The appalling antecedents of gun killings in America knows no rank with 11 presidential assassination attempts for which four American presidents died: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881); William McKinley (1901) John F Kennedy (1963) with Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan seriously injured in the 1912 and 1981 assassination attempts. The quartet presidential assassins: John Wilkes Booth; Charles J. Guiteau; Leon Czolgosz and Lee Harvey Oswald were all some of the first high profile abusers of the 2nd Amendment and the gun rights it granted. The death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X among many also resonates one of the foundational flaws of a nation globally reputed as the policeman of the earth. When will this trend ever end?.Millions have gone yet there seems to be hyper-partisanship about the Gun Control Question. This political cleavage represents a failure of the present generation of the political elites, the people and the American institutions to rise above and repeal the frailty of the 2nd Amendment, couched in one of the most nebulous languages in constitutional framings since the first ten Amendment to the world’s first-ever written constitution was ratified on 15 December 1791.The lessons from the government response to the Gun Question never placed America as a society developing societies should aspire to become, it is totally antithetical to the admirable values known about the greatest nation since the collapse of Nazism, Fascism and in the last decade of the 20th Century Communism for which in the submissions of Francis Fukuyama, Liberal Democracy became the Last Man metaphorically outlasting all other contending ideological contemporaries thus: “The End History”. The moral, spiritual, political leaders of America must converge on one front on the Gun Question, the Republicans must not hide under conservative garb and watch the blood of innocent generation of Americans been wasted by abusers of the Second Amendment. The appropriate measures to put a permanent lid on the mindless gun-related deaths must be carried out. The Democrats must forge a bipartisan consensus to arrest the moral drift in the land under the guise of the 2nd Amendment’s immutability clause: “shall not be infringed upon”. American political leaders must not under whatever guise send the wrong signal to the international community that will characterize the state as a policeman that cannot police his home, Charity begins at home, it is contradictory, antithetical and undermined every value upon which America prides herself under the rubric Pax-Americana. Historical antecedents show that the National Rifle Association is a shadow of itself, haven being skewed from its original goal to promote martial qualities and marksmanship to a lobbyist group without conscience for humanity. The American Institutions must live up to their mandate to tame the sinister and overbearing influence of the group. To the political leaders of the land the patriots of the 1775 Revolution fought for a land of the free it is your bounden duty to ensure their labor never be in vain: Lincoln was conscious of this during the heady days as was Andrew John who put their differences aside to restore national psyche, President Trump must not trade the blood of the children of America with his 2020 presidential re-election ambition as the NRA pro-Trump for 2020 billboards suggests. The Gun-Control debates further lays bare one of the antinomies of American Conservatism “being pro-life, anti-abortion and at the same time, pro-gun” as the abuses and defense of the 2nd Amendment represent one of the Ideological conspiracies against under the garb of Classical Liberalism propagated by contemporary votaries of American conservatism.

Professor Antonio Lima-de-Faria was our friend and, in a sense, a teacher. Despite our different fields of study, this master of scientific thought has deeply influenced both of us. Dr. Stefano Serafini came to know the work of Antonio Lima-de-Faria when he was just a teenager thanks to a disseminative article by the late Italian geneticist, Giuseppe Sermonti. Lima-de-Faria’s elegant vision of a universal order at all levels of nature opened his eyes to the consistency of patterns, forms, and function throughout the mineral, vegetable, and animal realms – a concept that has influenced his work in urban studies. Prof. Tatyana Turova met Antonio Lima-de-Faria on a museum tour of the Royal Physiographic Society (Lund). He was 95. When Antonio came to know that she is a mathematician working in probability, the discussion went straight to a critical analysis of the concept of randomness. That conversation kept going over the years. Professor Emeritus of Molecular Cytogenetics at Lund University (Sweden), Antonio Lima-de-Faria was a scientist of rare character. He had the innate gift of courage and the ability to tackle big problems despite dominant opinions. He was rigorous and tenacious in his method, and he had an immense knowledge and a sharp rationality. Antonio Lima-de-Faria defined himself as “a surviving dinosaur” to both of us. He was a magnificent old man – but that “dinosaur” had been ahead of his time since the beginning of his career. This was a constant. In the early 1960s, a multinational company discreetly requested him to develop a futuristic agrifood bioengineering program. This is the current reality of the genetically modified organism. Known to the scientific world as a pioneer and one of the most relevant exponents of molecular cytogenetics (his 1969 Handbook of Molecular Cytology is a classic) – not to mention author of over 200 research articles and influencing monographs – Lima-de-Faria became a member of some of the world’s top scientific societies. He also taught in some of the most prestigious universities. He received awards and recognition for his extraordinary activity. These included the appointment as Knight of the Order of the North Star by the Swedish King and as Great Official of the Order of Santiago by the President of Portugal. He held scientific consultancy positions for governments and institutions, including the European Space Agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the World Bank Group. He never stopped working and studying. In fact, he focused on the molecular organization of the chromosome until the end of his long life. Despite all of this, his endeavor was not always understood. His famous book, Evolution without Selection: Form and Function by Autoevolution (Elsevier, 1988, translated into Russian, Japanese, and Italian) is not only fundamental and revolutionary but also a case of sociology of science. This book, which advanced the current trend in molecular biology, even branded him as anti-evolutionist. Such a tag limited the essence of his work to a mere attack against natural selection – “a parlor game to explain life,” as Giuseppe Sermonti would say. Rather, this treatise, based on his vast physical, chemical, crystallographic, botanical, and zoological expertise, proposed to overcome the concept of natural selection. It downsized the role of genes and chromosomes in the architecture of living things through a plethora of biological forms that came directly from physical constraints. His self-evolutionism united the biological and inorganic worlds. This echoed Aristotelian and Goethean intuitions of morphofunctional homologies, that is, a sort of “non-genic kinship” between the spin of the ultramicroscopic electron, the shell of a Limnaea, and the spirals of immense galaxies. Indeed, selectionism (identifying natural selection not as a contributing cause but as the main engine of biological development) is the major methodological obstacle to the recognition and explanation of Lima-de-Faria’s morphofunctional homology. This is the true protagonist of his book. An order crosses and defines the subatomic, chemical, and physical worlds on all of their scales through progressive and deterministic channels. The form of Chitoniscus feedjeanus, traditionally explained as a classic example of the mimetic imitation of leaves, has a precedent in the arrangement of the crystals of pure bismuth. The same structure appears in the patterns of chlorite crystals, several vegetal hooks, the shells of ancient ammonites, or goat horns. The bird’s-eye-view of an estuary, the branches of a tree, and the vascularization of a mammal follow a single dendritic development pattern – so much so that their images, once reduced to the same size, are difficult to distinguish. Constant chemical commonalities actually underlie these and countless, more apparent natural oddities. Now, selection is not only powerless to account for them but also logically incompatible with any attempt to explain them. Like all strong theoretical systems faced with a fact that is refractory to integration, selectionism ignores homology. And when it cannot help but deal with it, it defines it as mere analogy. This then relegates it to that metaphor of annihilation, which is accidentality. Therefore, demolishing selectionism in biology was the necessary premise for developing a theory of self-evolution, towards which Lima-de-Faria has led us with a firm, methodical hand. Indeed, he deploys a set of images and observations that are rarely rivalled in modern scientific literature. Beyond classic studies on the subject, from D’Arcy Thompson (On Growth and Form, 1917) onwards, there is no doubt that recent molecular biology has continued to confirm with ever greater evidence the importance of elements that are complementary to classical theoretical genetics in the formation of living organisms. Lima-de-Faria had already begun to indicate and systematize these elements 40 years ago in Molecular Evolution and Organization of the Chromosome (1983). In fact, as the author himself recalled, Evolution without Selection is the consequence of those premises once applied to evolutionism. The last writing of Antonio Lima-de-Faria, printed in this very issue of Caryologia, develops and complements his marvelous treatise Praise of Chromosome “Folly”: Confessions of an Untamed Molecular Structure (2008). This masterpiece continues the great tradition of scientific giants such as Schrödinger and Feynman (authors that Antonio Lima-de-Faria highly regarded) talking to the public about the most advanced theories in a clear way. It is written with such wit and humor and such an elegant reference to art that any reader with a natural sciences or mathematics background, having read the first sentence, will not stop until the last. The book summarizes results on chromosome research and offers directions and ideas for further studies. It clearly confirms that understanding evolution requires a deep knowledge in not only chemistry and physics, but also mathematics – especially when it comes to the atomic level. Long discussions with Antonio Lima-de-Faria of one the authors began soon after Molecular Origins of Brain and Body Geometry: Plato’s Concept of Reality is Reversed (2014) was published. In an intriguing manner, this work unveils and explains the emergence of body patterns in animals by tracing them to the origin of the brain. For Antonio Lima-de-Faria, “geometry” manifests an “utter simplicity coupled to rigorous order that underlines the phenomenon.” He does not use the language of mathematics, as he was not trained in it. However – even if this may sound paradoxical for a non-mathematician – his search for order, for “a common denominator”, for a unifying theory, make them akin to fundamental mathematics. Remarkably, already in his early nineties, Antonio Lima-de-Faria completed an extensive analysis of the structures and functions of living organisms on a molecular level. He then created a new book, Periodic Tables Unifying Living Organisms at the Molecular Level: The Predictive Power of the Law of Periodicity (2017). This truly fascinating work provides a new perspective on the relations between matter and energy. Its logical systematic approach links different levels, from atoms to macromolecules to organisms. As Lima-de-Faria stated, his books do not give ultimate answers and immediate solutions to the posed questions. On the other hand, readers are invited to use the tools, methods, and ideas that he generously expressed in his late works. “Order allows variation but imposes in the same time a canalization that is patent in what we call evolution, being that of galaxies or of living organisms.” Antonio Lima-de-Faria was almost 100 years old when he released his last book, Science and Art are Based on the Same Principles and Values (2020) – something he had thought about “for 30 years.” It was his scientific testament, encompassing his life-long love for art, beauty, and truth. There, as a “lonely wolf howling in the immensity of the night,” he launched a straightforward warning: “At present a wave of obscurantism is spreading over Western countries affecting both science and art in a deadly way. (…) Modern technology has been most successful in transforming our daily lives and in allowing us to conquer outer space. These impressive achievements have, to a large extent, made us dumb, making it difficult to perceive the danger that lies ahead. Hence, there is a pressing need to bring forward the original sources in which, leading scientists and renowned artists, explained the principles that they followed in their discovery of novel phenomena and in the creation of unique works of art. It turns out that both types of minds speak the same language. There is a basic denominator that unites the human endeavor.” Lima-de-Faria’s works are jewels for scientific and aesthetic minds. The beauty of Nature absorbed him completely, and he devoted himself passionately to it. He was an admirer and a true connoisseur of the arts, music, and ballet. He was a passionate gardener and loved roses and the fragrance of flowers. Antonio Lima-de-Faria was a man of enlightenment, dedication, will, and truth. With his gentle and generous attitude towards anyone around him, Antonio Lima-de-Faria radiated love. He knew what happiness is (“What is Happiness?”, Journal of Biourbanism, IX, 2021). Antonio Lima-de-Faria is an endless source of inspiration and admiration for us.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic represents one of the toughest challenges to the global public health and modern healthcare systems. Since the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Indonesia on March 2, 2020, all stakeholders in healthcare along with the government of Indonesia through the Ministry of Health and its recently assembled COVID-19 National Task Force started to prepare for the surge of patients while simultaneously implementing various preventive public health measures. In terms of public policy, the government has been recommending people to maintain social and physical distancing, advocating the routine use of fabric face mask, encouraging workers (notably those who work in ‘non-essential’ sectors) to stay home and work from their home, if possible; applying large scale social restrictions in certain areas, and rapidly constructing designated facilities for both treatment and quarantine purposes. In terms of healthcare services, several professional medical organizations and nearly all healthcare facilities recommend and impose various measures, such as wearing certain levels of standard personal protective equipment (PPE) appropriately, converting standard hospital wards and operating rooms (OR) to makeshift isolation wards, high care units (HCU), and intensive care units, creating and publishing care guidelines to help clinicians manage their practices more safely during COVID-19 crisis, devising algorithms for the screening of COVID-19 infection, and triaging elective surgical and medical cases to avoid further burden on the already strained healthcare capacity due to COVID-19 pandemic. As an integral part of a healthcare system, the global community of vascular and endovascular surgeons has actively been contributing its share in the efforts of preventing and controlling as well as tackling the enormous burden of COVID-19. Ng et al. from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS), recently reported the results of surveys consisted of seven questions regarding vascular and endovascular surgery practices to vascular surgeons all over the world. They found that the majority of vascular and endovascular surgery services, including outpatient services, inpatient care, and elective procedures were either suspended or scaled-down temporarily to allow for better allocation of medical resources.1 Mirza from Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis, Minnesota, described the change of vascular surgery practice at his institution, which comprised of rescheduling all elective vascular and endovascular surgery cases except emergency procedures for life- or limb-threatening conditions, and utilizing telemedicine for a significant proportion of outpatient consultations and services.2 The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) has also published the Vascular Surgery Triage Guidelines to aid clinicians in triaging vascular and endovascular surgical patients.3,4 When and how will the COVID-19 pandemic end? Will people continue to work from home and avoid commuting, even after the crisis phase of the pandemic has passed? Will surgeons and physicians need to delay elective services further until safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19 are available? All measures previously described were aimed to manage and better allocate healthcare capacity for COVID-19 cases, chiefly during the time of crisis so that the surge of new cases wouldn’t put too much burden on healthcare systems that were already stretched to their limits. Based on the officially daily-released information regarding the number of new COVID-19 cases, Indonesia arguably has not yet passed the peak of the epidemiological curve so that those practices will be, or at the very least, should be, remain in place for some time to come. However, such aggressive approaches in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic require enormous economic sacrifice, making some of those strategies unsustainable for the long term. While some researchers are optimistic that a vaccine will be ready by the end of 2020, it won’t be possible to postpone elective surgical services and keep people working from their homes for 4–6 months, considering the economic catastrophe it would bring.5 From the perspective of healthcare management, elective surgical services, along with outpatient consultations, are one of the primary sources of revenue for private hospitals, and, as a result, the suspension of elective procedures could potentially jeopardize their operations and drive them towards bankruptcy. The term “new normal” in Indonesia was popularized by Prof. drh. Wiku Adisasmito, MSc. Ph.D., the chair of the expert panel for COVID-19 National Task Force, essentially meaning “living as usual while practicing additional health and safety measures”, especially for the public. People are always advised to wear fabric face masks (medical- grade masks for the elderly) when they are out and unable to safely distance themselves, maintain good personal hygiene, keep a safe physical distance of at least 1 meter when interacting with others, and refrain from gathering in large numbers. For healthcare professionals, the term “new normal” essentially carries more or less equal implications, which includes adapting medical and surgical practices to safer models that protect healthcare workers, patients, families, and communities from COVID-19 infection during the time of crisis while concurrently economically sustainable for the long term. In the United States, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), along with ACS, has issued Joint Statement for the resumption of elective surgical services after COVID-19 pandemic; one of the prerequisite of which is a decline of newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases over a consecutive 14-day period in a region.6 ASA guidelines also warn hospitals to be prepared for the surge of elective surgical and procedural volume, since there will be a backlog after the temporary postponement of elective services; thus, before these services can be resumed, hospitals need to ensure that they have the necessary capacity to handle these increase in volume without reducing its standard of care.6 Some professional medical organizations in Indonesia, including the Indonesian Society for Vascular Surgery (INASVS), has also published a set of recommendations regarding vascular and endovascular surgical practice in the time of “new normal”. Among these recommendations is the use of PPE in clinical practices, whether during outpatient consultations and inpatient care or when performing procedures in the OR or cath lab. Additionally, the recent INASVS guidelines also emphasized for the development and implementation of screening algorithm for all vascular patients, especially those who need to undergo both elective and emergency vascular surgical and endovascular interventions for their conditions, to assure sustainability, this algorithm needs to encompass both accurate and affordable COVID-19 screening tests. Surgeons will also need to take into account the “attitude” of the virus, asymptomatic patients are large in numbers, and they are very infectious indeed. For doing elective operations, surgeons need to be accountable for the patient, not only pre or intraoperatively, but also when it is required to ensure that the patients are COVID-19 free when they are discharged from the hospital. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly is neither the first global pandemic in recorded history, nor will it be the last. In the past, humanity has faced several catastrophic and deadly pandemics, including the Black Death, which ravaged Europe and parts of Asia in the 14th century, and the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 to 1920 coinciding with the First World War. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is the first-ever pandemic in modern history that has caused both millions of deaths globally and, at the same time, impacted the global economy so severely, prompting businesses, big and small, to cease their operations and threatening people’s livelihood, both directly and indirectly. It has put a heavy burden on the healthcare systems in an era when the right to health is considered as a fundamental human right, and universal health coverage is the norm in virtually all industrialized and even some developing countries. Thus, it is imperative for all stakeholders in healthcare, including vascular and endovascular surgeons, to actively contribute and ensure healthcare systems will not be overwhelmed in facing the COVID-19 crisis. The efforts and actions we make should not compromise the quality of care we to our patients, while on the other hand, be cost-effective and financially sustainable for the long term. In this “new normal”, every vascular and endovascular specialist has to be well-prepared, well-adapted, and well-equipped to provide the highest quality of care for the community. Jakarta, 9th June 2020 Dedy Pratama President of Indonesian Society for Vascular and Endovascular Surgery

With the conclusion of the 2016 presidential election in the US, presidential scholars have shifted their attention not only to the Trump presidency, but also towards his possible re-election campaign. Throughout the history of the United States incumbent presidents have usually won their bid for a second term in office. The presidency offers incumbents several inherent electoral advantages – e.g., party nomination and unified party base, name recognition and political experience, access to government resources. However, some incumbent candidates have been unable to capitalize on these advantages. The current paper analyzes the electoral bids of Presidents Ford, Carter, and Bush, identifying the factors that can invalidate the advantages intrinsic to holding the office of President of the United States.

Abstract Objective Qualifications needed to achieve national leadership positions in hand surgery are poorly defined. This study compares the academic accomplishments, demographics, and training backgrounds of presidents elected to serve the American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) and the American Association for Hand Surgery (AAHS). Methods The ASSH and AAHS provided names of elected Presidents (1990–2022, n = 64). Curriculum vitae and academic web sites were used to collect demographic, training, bibliometric, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding data of presidents. Results Presidents were predominately male (95%), Caucasian (90%), and orthopaedic surgery residency-trained (66%). Only 9% were racial minorities (8% Asian, 2% Hispanic, and 0% African American). The average age at appointment was 59 ± 7 years old, which was an average of 23 years from completion of hand surgery fellowship. More presidents received plastic surgery residency training in AAHS than ASSH (50 vs. 19%). The most represented hand surgery fellowships were Mayo Clinic (14%), University of Louisville (11%), and Duke University (9%). Twenty-one presidents participated in a travel fellowship (33%). Thirty presidents served as Department Chair or Division Chief at time of election (47%). The average h-index was 34 ± 18 resulting from 164 ± 160 peer-reviewed manuscripts and was similar between the two organizations. Eleven presidents had NIH grant funding (18%) and there were no differences in procurement or funding totals between the two organizations. Conclusion Presidents of American hand surgery societies obtain high levels of scholarly activity regardless of training specialty. Women and racial minorities remain underrepresented at the highest levels of leadership.

Abstract Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides in part that anyone who takes an oath as an officer of the United States to support its Constitution but engages in insurrection may not hold any civil or military office under it until Congress removes the disability by a two-thirds vote of each House. The insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the coming presidential election raise two pressing constitutional questions. For purposes of Section 3, is the President an officer of the United States, and is the Presidency an office under the United States? This Article makes the case that the President is an officer of, and holds an office under, the United States for those purposes. It contributes to the debate over the provision's reach by setting out the broad case for Section 3's application to Presidents and the Presidency, utilizing text, purpose, legislative history, canons of construction, ordinary usage, and contemporaneous judicial and executive interpretations. The Article demonstrates public understandings before and after ratification that Section 3 bars eligibility to the Presidency, both in general and for the most important disqualified rebel—Jefferson Davis. It catalogues descriptions of Presidents as officers of the United States from Washington in 1794 to Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and Garfield, many of which occurred in the context of the President's election, constitutional position, and role in preventing domestic violence, preserving the Union, and enforcing the law during Reconstruction. Finally, it ties related Reconstruction statutes, legislative history, and contemporaneous judicial and executive interpretations into the broad case that Section 3 bars faithless Presidents from again taking the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” until Congress permits.

Elections are a process of electing to fill certain political positions, such as presidents, vice presidents, people's representatives at various levels of government, to the simplest or the least of the village heads. From this perspective of Constitutional Law, direct popular vote is conducted within the period of office in an organization of the state. Then speaking of the election inevitably must be placed within the framework of the principle of people's sovereignty, because the election itself is a manifestation of people's participation that is central to the principle of people's sovereignty or democracy. Its means of political participation of the community to participate in determining public policy. To limit the number of political parties, many methods have been used, such as the electoral threshold and parliamentary threshold. However, the various models used have not been fully effective. In this paper the author will share his views regarding the party simplification model in Indonesia with the aim of strengthening the presidential system. This research article will examine how the ideal model is to simplify parties in Indonesia in the general election system in Indonesia. In addition, this research will discuss the presidential election system in the United States

Political authenticity is connected to higher levels of political trust from electorates and can influence political outcomes, but it is often overlooked as a relevant factor for electoral behavior. To date, discussions of how authenticity appears and changes in politics typically remain at the theoretical level and are rarely comparative. This article develops a framework to identify and compare how authenticity is performed in political discourses over time and across settings by politicians. To demonstrate the usefulness of the framework, this article investigates authenticity performances in 21,496 political texts of electoral debates, interviews, campaigns, and official speeches by presidents and presidential candidates in Brazil and the United States since 1988. The findings indicate that authenticity is generally performed with greater frequency by presidents and presidential candidates in Brazil than in the United States, though authenticity performances are not more prevalent during election years in either country.

This essay argues that the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, can be partially explained by the rise of what we call presidential eschatology, a religious master narrative that represents a historic shift from presidents appealing to God to presidents becoming a messiah figure. More specifically, we trace President Trump’s embrace of this kind of religious discourse—which we contend is a form of weaponized political communication aiming to undermine democracy—to his acceptance of a millennialist narrative fashioned by QAnon conspiracy theorists. Through a close reading of primary sources from the movement, the study illustrates how these eschatological themes surfaced in QAnon's discourse and were exploited by Trump and his allies as they sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

AbstractThe US Supreme Court has been rightfully criticized for its role in contributing to the anti‐democratic processes in the United States. However, the focus on the apex court overlooks the potential for the judiciary as a whole to support democratic institutions. In the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, a series of lawsuits contesting the results were filed in federal courts, overseen by judges appointed by presidents from both major parties. Despite the prevailing perception of courts as politically influenced, every one of these cases ruled against the former President Trump's claims. This research delves into the influence of judicial norms and legal profession culture, intertwined with specific procedural doctrines such as Article III standing and justiciability. The study contends that these procedural rules, deeply ingrained within the culture of the legal profession in the United States, served as a crucial mechanism upholding judicial independence. The analysis draws from the texts of the 2020 election‐related court decisions and interviews with 17 legal experts, primarily consisting of federal and state Supreme Court judges.

The Electoral College is the method used in every four years to elect the President of the United States. Given that the Electoral College gives the power to elect the president to state-casted votes, the system has in recent years become a source of growing controversy given how two presidents, George Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016, without winning the national popular vote. These elections and the public discourse around them have brought new life to the purpose and impacts of the Electoral College. This paper uses key presidential elections, including those of John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Harrison, Woodrow Wilson, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, give insight on how the Electoral College should now be understood. In particular, this paper examines the implications of the Electoral College on one fundamental question: Does election to the presidency via the Electoral College route fundamentally affect the ability of a president to govern effectively? Examining these elections, the context around and impact after these elections, and modern United States political history shows that when the Electoral College is not an extraordinary or exceptionally notable part of an election cycle, the Electoral College does not fundamentally affect the president’s ability to command public and political support required to effectively govern. However, when the Electoral College does become a point of focus during a presidential election and in the beginning of a president’s term, it has wide-ranging impacts. In particular, the College can shape the political and public mandate the president has to lead, shaping their overall agenda for their time in office; cause biases to arise towards certain states and conservative politics; and undermine their ability to serve as a unifying figure. With each modern election having an increased focus on the Electoral College, the system is likely to cause increased polarization and tension with each passing election if serious reforms are not undertaken.

Herbert Hoover, the archetypal self-made man, was the 31st president of the United States. His term in office was overwhelmed by the Great Depression and he was defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1932 November presidential election. His post-presidential years were spent writing and serving 4 subsequent presidents. Near the end of his life, he underwent a cholecystectomy for symptomatic gallstones and a colectomy for colon cancer. His health care was complicated by the development of cirrhosis and recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding. After his 90th birthday, he died in October 1964 from massive bleeding due to a Dieulafoy lesion of the gastric cardia. This manuscript will review the details of his health and the physicians who cared for Hoover during his final years.

Gasoline prices are often a heated topic during presidential election campaigns in the United States. Yet, presidents have limited control over gasoline prices. Do voters reward or punish the president for changes in gasoline prices? Why might voters blame the president for an outcome beyond direct presidential control? This study addresses these questions by testing the effects of gasoline prices on pocketbook retrospection by voters. To capture the personal economic burden of gasoline prices, we rely on average driving times to work, given the inelastic nature of gasoline consumption for commuting. The results provide evidence for pocketbook voting: constituencies with longer average driving times to work are more likely to hold the president accountable for gasoline price increases. These findings have broader implications regarding electoral accountability and rationality in voting.

After December 6, 1917, the government of the United States led by President Woodrow Wilson decided not to recognize the new government of Russia, which was led by the Bolshevik Party. Some of the reasons for this lack of recognition came from the Bolshevik government’srefusal to honor prior debits owed by the Tsarist government and the seizure of American property. The next three presidents would continue this policy.1 For the next sixteen years, many Americans visited and wrote about the Soviet Union. Amongst those visitors was a delegation of twenty-five who visited the Soviet Union in the summer of 1928. Their stated purpose was to,“study methods of public instruction in Soviet Russia this summer.” 2 The most influential amongst the twenty-five was John Dewey, a professor of philosophy at Colombia University and one of the leading educational reformers in the United States. In the time during and after this trip Dewey wrote a series of articles for the “New Republic” and later collected these articles andplaced them in his book, Impressions of the Revolutionary World.3 This book also dealt with his travels to China in 1920, Turkey in 1924, and Mexico in 1926. This book does not tell the full story of the trip. By analyzing his letters that he sent during this time, one can recreate a partial itinerary of his daily activities and those that he met with. Those letters also reveal that this trip influenced not only the twenty-five educators from the United States but also had an impact on Soviet educators because they had the ability to finally meet the man that they had studied for so long. The United States Department of State was also interested in this trip and used it to learn more about the Soviet Union. The Department of State was also dealing with anticommunism at this time and this caused Dewey’s trip to be closely monitored. The New York Times and other newspapers reported on this trip and the aftermath of this trip can be seen through these reports. This trip impacted not only those within the Soviet Union but also the State Departments and the American public’s view of the Soviet Union.

When building a global brand of any kind—a political actor, clothing style, or belief system— developing widespread awareness is a primary goal. Short of knowing any of the stories or products of a brand, being talked about in whatever fashion—raw fame—is, as Oscar Wilde would have it, better than not being talked about at all. Here, we measure, examine, and contrast the day-to-day raw fame dynamics on Twitter for US Presidents and major US Presidential candidates from 2008 to 2020: Barack Obama, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. We assign “lexical fame” to be the number and (Zipfian) rank of the (lowercased) mentions made for each individual across all languages. We show that all five political figures have at some point reached extraordinary volume levels of what we define to be “lexical ultrafame”: An overall rank of approximately 300 or less which is largely the realm of function words and demarcated by the highly stable rank of ‘god’. By this measure, ‘trump’ has become enduringly ultrafamous, from the 2016 election on. We use typical ranks for country names and function words as standards to improve perception of scale. We quantify relative fame rates and find that in the eight weeks leading up the 2008 and 2012 elections, ‘obama’ held a 1000:757 volume ratio over ‘mccain’ and 1000:892 over ‘romney’, well short of the 1000:544 and 1000:504 volumes favoring ‘trump’ over ‘hillary’ and ‘biden’ in the 8 weeks leading up to the 2016 and 2020 elections. Finally, we track how only one other entity has more sustained ultrafame than ‘trump’ on Twitter: The K-pop (Korean pop) band BTS. We chart the dramatic rise of BTS, finding their Twitter handle ‘@bts twt’ has been able to compete with ‘a’ and ‘the’, reaching a rank of three at the day scale and a rank of one at the quarter-hour scale. Our findings for BTS more generally point to K-pop’s growing economic, social, and political power.

The aim of this article is to analyze what accounted for the hope Caribbean leaders and the general Caribbean population had regarding U.S. engagement in the region with the election of Barack Obama. The paper provides a brief analysis of Obama’s foreign policy in the Americas, with particular focus on the small island developing states in the Caribbean region. Utilising public discourse (online discussions and local news coverage), the paper explores the affection and the benefit of the doubt that was given to Obama as president, despite the historical asymmetrical relationship and experience of American foreign policy in the Caribbean and Latin America. The paper draws on the long history and experience of U.S. engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean broadly, but focuses on the smaller island nations of the Caribbean as they generally find themselves in more precarious economic, political, and social situations than their larger mainland counterparts. The paper also provides a review of some highlighted events in the region over the eight years of Obama’s presidency, including a discussion on the role of “blackness” in the Caribbean and the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States. The analysis shows that while the Caribbean harbors deep affection for Obama, his policies were no different from his predecessors. His policies toward the region were no more progressive or consultative or less hegemonic and dictatorial than previous American presidents. The affection and benefit of the doubt given to Obama had little to do with policies and more to do with “skinship” on the one hand and the dependent mindset of many Caribbean leaders on the other hand.

Spiritualist, stockbroker, publisher, activist for women’s suffrage, equal rights, and “free love,” Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 –1927) was the first woman nominated to run for President of the United States. The Principles of Social Freedom was delivered to a packed New York City audience in 1871. It called for a revolution in the legal, social, and sexual situation of women, for their liberation from the “despotic” control of men, and for their social freedom to live and love as they might choose. Mrs. Woodhull based this radical reimagining of social norms on America’s own values of freedom and equality, and she found a historical precedent: “Men do not seem to comprehend that they are now pursuing toward women the same despotic course that King George pursued toward the American colonies.” Overtly Christian, optimistic, and forward-looking, Mrs. Woodhull announced the inevitability of political equality between women and men: “Women must rise from their position as ministers to the passions of men to be their equals.” Radically for her era, she called for a social Reconstruction and the sexual freedom of women in and out of marriage, especially their absolute right to control their own reproductive decisions: “I protest against the custom which compels women to give the control of their maternal functions over to anybody.” Mrs. Woodhull’s own history gave credence to her picture of women’s conditions. Married at 15 to an abusive alcoholic philandering husband, obliged to support a bankrupt family with two children, she had forged successful careers as speaker, advisor, healer, Wall Street broker, newspaper publisher, and finally as a dynamic political force. At the time of this speech, Mrs. Woodhull was a declared candidate for President. She had recently argued before a Congressional committee that the the 14th and 15th Amendments established women’s right to vote. Earlier that month, in a much publicized incident, she had been turned away from the polls while attempting to vote in the New York election. In this daring lecture she imagines how true legal and political equality of women will ultimately revolutionize sexual politics, and holds out the promise of a world where social freedom and free love are inevitable.

Introduction Presidents “define who Americans are—often by declaring who they aren’t”, and “by their very utterances […] have shaped our sense of who we are as Americans” (Stuckey, front cover). This advocacy of some groups and policies to the exclusion of others has been facilitated in the United States’ political culture by the country music industry. Indeed, President Richard Nixon said of country music that it “radiates a love of this nation—a patriotism,” adding that it “makes America a better country” (Bufwack and Oermann 328). Country music’s ardent support of American military conflict, including Vietnam, has led to its long-term support of Republican candidates. There has been a general lack of scholarly interest, however, in how country music has promoted Republican definitions of what it means to be an American. Accordingly, we have two primary objectives. First, we will demonstrate that Republicans, aided by country music, have used the theme of defence of “country,” especially post-9/11, to attempt to intimidate detractors. Secondly, Republicans have questioned the love of “country,” or “patriotism,” of their electoral opponents just as country musicians have attempted to silence their own critics. This research is timely in that little has been done to merge Presidential advocacy and country music; furthermore, with the election of a new President mere days away, it is important to highlight the tendencies toward intolerance that both conservatism and country music have historically shared. Defence of ‘Country’ After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush addressed the nation before a Joint Session of Congress on 20 September 2001. During this speech, the president threatened the international community and raised the spectre of fear in Americans both while drawing distinctions between the United States and its enemies. This message was reflected and reinforced by several patriotic anthems composed by country artists, thus enhancing its effect. In his remarks before Congress, Bush challenged the international community: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists;” thus “advocating some groups to the exclusion of others” on the international stage (20 September 2001). With these words, the President expanded the definition of the United States’ enemies to include not only those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, but also anyone who refused to support him. Republican Senator John McCain’s hawkishness regarding the attacks mirrored the President’s. “There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” McCain said the next morning on ABC (American Broadcasting Company) News. Within a month he made clear his priority: “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. Later he yelled to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!” (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/17/america/mccain.php). Bush’s address also encouraged Americans at home to “be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat” (20 September 2001). The subtle “us vs. them” tension here is between citizens and those who would threaten them. Bush added that “freedom and fear” had always “been at war” and “God is not neutral between them” (20 September 2001) suggesting a dualism between God and Satan with God clearly supporting the cause of the United States. Craig Allen Smith’s research refers to this as Bush’s “angel/devil jeremiad.” The President’s emphasis on fear, specifically the fear that the American way of life was being assailed, translated into public policy including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. This strategic nomenclature strengthened the power of the federal government and has been used by Republicans to suggest that if a candidate or citizen is not a terrorist then what does he/she have to fear from the government? The impact of Bush’s rhetoric of fear has of late been evaluated by scholars who have termed it “melodrama” in international affairs (Anker; Sampert and Treiberg). To disseminate his message for Americans to support his defence of “country,” Bush needed look no further than country music. David Firestein, a State Department diplomat and published authority on country music, asserted that the Bush team “recognised the power of country music as a political communication device” (86). The administration’s appeal to country music is linked to what Firestein called the “honky-tonk gap” which delineates red states and blue states. In an analysis of census data, Radio-Locator’s comprehensive listing by state of country music radio stations, and the official 2004 election results, he concluded that If you were to overlay a map of the current country music fan base onto the iconic red-and-blue map of the United States, you would find that its contours coincide virtually identically with those of the red state region. (84) And country musicians were indeed powerful in communicating the Republican message after 9/11. Several country musicians tapped into Bush’s defence of country rhetoric with a spate of songs including Alan Jackson’s Where Were You? (When the World Stopped Turning), Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (the Angry American), and Darryl Worley’s Have You Forgotten? to name a few. Note how well the music parallels Bush’s attempt to define Americans. For instance, one of the lines from Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (the Angry American) speaks of those who have given their lives so that other Americans may rest peacefully. This sentiment is reiterated by the theme of Worley’s Have You Forgotten? in which he talks of spending time with soldiers who have no doubts about why they are at war. Both songs implicitly indict the listener for betraying United States soldiers if his/her support for the Iraqi war wanes or, put in Bush terms, the listener would become a supporter of “terrorism.” Country music’s appeal to middle-America’s red state conservatism has made the genre a natural vehicle for supporting the defence of country. Indeed, country songs have been written about every war in United States history; most expressing support for the conflict and the troops as opposed to protesting the United States’ action: “Since the Civil War and Reconstruction, ‘Dixie’ has always been the bellwether of patriotic fervour in time of war and even as the situation in Vietnam reached its lowest point and support for the war began to fade, the South and its distinctive music remained solidly supportive” (Andresen 105). Historically, country music has a long tradition of attempting to “define who Americans were by defining who they weren’t” (Stuckey). As Bufwack and Oermann note within country music “images of a reactionary South were not hard to find.” They add “Dixie fertilized ‘three r’s’ – the right, racism, and religion” (328). Country musicians supported the United States’ failed intervention in Vietnam with such songs as It’s for God and Country and You Mom (That’s Why I’m Fighting In Vietnam), and even justified the American massacre of noncombatants at My Lai in the Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley (328). Thus, a right-wing response to the current military involvement in Iraq was not unexpected from the industry and the honky-tonk state listeners. During the current election, Republican presidential nominee McCain has also received a boost from the country music genre as John Rich, of Big and Rich, wrote Raising McCain, a musical tribute to McCain’s military service used as his campaign theme song. The song, debuted at a campaign rally on 1 August 2008, in Florida, mentions McCain’s ‘Prisoner of War’ status to keep the focus on the war and challenge those who would question it. Scholars have researched the demographics of the country music listener as they have evaluated the massification theory: the notion that the availability of a widespread media culture would break down social and cultural barriers and result in a “homogenised” society as opposed to the results of government-controlled media in non-democratic countries (Peterson and DiMaggio). They have determined that the massification theory has only been partially demonstrated in that regional and class barriers have eroded to some extent but country music listeners are still predominately white and older (Peterson and DiMaggio 504). These individuals do tend to be more conservative within the United States’ political culture, and militarism has a long history within both country music and conservatism. If the bad news of the massification theory is that a mass media market may not perpetuate a homogenous society, there is good news. The more onerous fears that the government will work in tandem with the media to control the people in a democracy seem not to have been borne out over time. Although President Bush’s fear tactics were met with obsequious silence initially, resistance to the unquestioning support of the war has steadily grown. In 2003, a worldwide rally opposed the invasion of Iraq because it was a sovereign state and because the Bush doctrine lacked United Nations’ support. Further opposition in the United States included rallies and concerts as well as the powerful display in major cities across the nation of pairs of combat boots representing fallen soldiers (Olson). Bush’s popularity has dropped precipitously, with his disapproval ratings higher than any President in history at 71% (Steinhauser). While the current economic woes have certainly been a factor, the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain can also be viewed as a referendum on the Bush war. The American resistance to the Bush rhetoric and the Iraq war is all the more significant in light of research indicating that citizens incorrectly believe that the opposition to the Vietnam War was typified by protests against the troops rather than the war itself (Beamish). This false notion has empowered the Republicans and country musicians to challenge the patriotism of anyone who would subsequently oppose the military involvement of the United States, and it is to this topic of patriotism that we now turn. Patriotism Patriotism can be an effective way for presidential candidates to connect with voters (Sullivan et al). It has been a particularly salient issue since the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, George W. Bush, a man whose limited military service had been the subject of debate in 2000, was able to employ the persistent patriotic themes of country music to his electoral advantage. In fact, Firestein argued that country music radio had a greater effect on the 2004 election than any ads run by issue groups because it “inculcated and reinforced conservative values in the red state electorate, helped frame the issues of the day on terms favourable to the conservative position on those issues, and primed red state voters to respond positively to President Bush’s basic campaign message of family, country, and God” (Firestein 83). Bush even employed Only in America, a patriotic anthem performed by Brooks and Dunn, as a campaign theme song, because the war and patriotism played such a prominent role in the election. That the Bush re-election campaign successfully cast doubt on the patriotism of three-time Purple Heart winner, Democratic Senator John Kerry, during the campaign is evidence of Firestein’s assertion. The criticism was based on a book: Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (O’Neill and Corsi). The book was followed by advertisements funded by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth which included unsubstantiated claims that Kerry lied or exaggerated his combat role in Vietnam in order to obtain two of his Purple Hearts and his Bronze Star; the testimony of Kerry’s crewmen and Navy records notwithstanding, these ads were effective in smearing Kerry’s service record and providing the President with an electoral advantage. As far as country music was concerned, the 2004 election played out against the backdrop of the battle between the patriotic Toby Keith and the anti-American Dixie Chicks. The Dixie Chicks were berated after lead singer Natalie Maines’s anti-Bush comments during a concert in London. The trio’s song about an American soldier killed in action, Travelin’ Soldier, quickly fell from the top spot of the country music charts. Moreover, while male singers such as Keith, Darryl Worley, and Alan Jackson received accolades for their post 9/11 artistic efforts, the Dixie Chicks endured a vitriolic reaction from country music fans as their CDs were burned, country radio refused to play their music, their names were added to an internet list of traitors, their concerts were protested by Bush supporters, and their lives were even threatened (http://www.poppolitics.com/archives/2003/04/Bandwagon). Speaking from experience at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Kerry addressed the issue of patriotism stating: This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: you don’t decide who loves this country; you don’t decide who is a patriot; you don’t decide whose service counts and whose doesn’t. […] After all, patriotism is not love of power or some cheap trick to win votes; patriotism is love of country. (http://www.clipsandcomment.com/2008/08/27/full-text-john-kerry-speech-democratic-national-convention/) Kerry broached the issue because of the constant attacks on the patriotism of Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama. At the most basic level, many of the attacks questioned whether Obama was even an American. Internet rumours persisted that Obama was a Muslim who was not even an American citizen. The attacks intensified when the Obamas’ pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, came under fire for comments made during a sermon in which he stated “God damn America.” As a result, Obama was forced to distance himself from his pastor and his church. Obama was also criticised for not wearing a United States flag lapel pin. When Michelle Obama stated for the “first time [she was] proud of her country” for its willingness to embrace change in February of 2008, Cindy McCain responded that she “had always been proud of her country” with the implication being, of course, a lack of patriotism on the part of Michelle Obama. Even the 13 July 2008 cover of the liberal New Yorker portrayed the couple as flag-burning Muslim terrorists. During the 2008 election campaign, McCain has attempted to appeal to patriotism in a number of ways. First, McCain’s POW experience in Vietnam has been front and centre as he touts his experience in foreign policy. Second, the slogan of the campaign is “Country First” implying that the Obama campaign does not put the United States first. Third, McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, insisted in a speech on 4 October 2008, that Barack Obama has been “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Her reference was to Obama’s acquaintance, Bill Ayers, who was involved in a series of Vietnam era bombings; the implication, however, was that Obama has terrorist ties and is unpatriotic. Palin stood behind her comments even though several major news organisations had concluded that the relationship was not significant as Ayers’ terrorist activities occurred when Obama was eight-years-old. This recent example is illustrative of Republican attempts to question the patriotism of Democrats for their electoral advantage. Country music has again sided with the Republicans particularly with Raising McCain. However, the Democrats may have realised the potential of the genre as Obama chose Only in America as the song played after his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. He has also attempted to reach rural voters by starting his post-convention campaign in Bristol, Virginia, a small, conservative town. Conclusion Thus, in the wake of 9/11, Republicans seized the opportunity to control the culture through fear and patriotic fervour. They were facilitated in this endeavor by the country music industry with songs that that would questions the motives, defence of “country,” and patriotism, of anyone who would question the Bush administration. This alliance between country music and the right is an historically strong one, and we recommend more research on this vital topic. While this election may indeed be a referendum on the war, it has been influenced by an economic downturn as well. Ultimately, Democrats will have to convince rural voters that they share their values; they don’t have the same edge as Republicans without the reliance of country music. However, the dynamic of country music has changed to somewhat reflect the war fatigue since the 2004 campaign. The Angry American, Toby Keith, has admitted that he is actually a Democrat, and country music listeners have grown tired of the “barrage of pro-troop sentiment,” especially since the summer of 2005 (Willman 115). As Joe Galante, the chief of the RCA family of labels in Nashville, stated, “It’s the relatability. Kerry never really spent time listening to some of those people” (Willman 201). Bill Clinton, a Southern governor, certainly had relatability, carrying the normally red states and overcoming the honky-tonk gap, and Obama has seen the benefit of country music by playing it as the grand finale of the Democratic Convention. Nevertheless, we recommend more research on the “melodrama” theory of the Presidency as the dynamics of the relationship between the Presidency and the country music genre are currently evolving. References Andreson, Lee. 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This article explores how fat women protesting challenges norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces. We use the term fat as a political reclamation; Fat Studies scholars and fat activists prefer the term fat, over the normative term “overweight” and the pathologising term “obese/obesity” (Lee and Pausé para 3). Who is and who isn’t fat, we suggest, is best left to self-determination, although it is generally accepted by fat activists that the term is most appropriately adopted by individuals who are unable to buy clothes in any store they choose. Using a tweet from conservative commentator Ann Coulter as a leaping-off point, we examine the narratives around women in the public sphere and explore how fat bodies might transgress further the norms set by society. The public representations of women in politics and protest are then are set in the context of ‘activist wisdom’ (Maddison and Scalmer) from two sides of the globe. Activist wisdom gives preference to the lived knowledge and experience of activists as tools to understand social movements. It seeks to draw theoretical implications from the practical actions of those on the ground. In centring the experiences of ourselves and other activists, we hope to expand existing understandings of body politics, gender, and political power in this piece. It is important in researching social movements to look both at the representations of protest and protestors in all forms of media as this is the ‘public face’ of movements, but also to examine the reflections of the individuals who collectively put their weight behind bringing social change.A few days after the 45th President of the United States was elected, people around the world spilled into the streets and participated in protests; precursors to the Women’s March which would take place the following January. Pictures of such marches were shared via social media, demonstrating the worldwide protest against the racism, misogyny, and overall oppressiveness, of the newly elected leader. Not everyone was supportive of these protests though; one such conservative commentator, Ann Coulter, shared this tweet: Image1: A tweet from Ann Coulter; the tweet contains a picture of a group of protestors, holding signs protesting Trump, white supremacy, and for the rights of immigrants. In front of the group, holding a megaphone is a woman. Below the picture, the text reads, “Without fat girls, there would be no protests”.Coulter continued on with two more tweets, sharing pictures of other girls protesting and suggesting that the protestors needed a diet programme. Kivan Bay (“Without Fat Girls”) suggested that perhaps Coulter was implying that skinny girls do not have time to protest because they are too busy doing skinny girl things, like buying jackets or trying on sweaters. Or perhaps Coulter was arguing that fat girls are too visible, too loud, and too big, to be taken seriously in their protests. These tweets provide a point of illustration for how fat women protesting challenge norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces While Coulter’s tweet was most likely intended as a hostile personal attack on political grounds, we find it useful in its foregrounding of gender, bodies and protest which we consider in this article, beginning with a review of fat girls’ role in social justice movements.Across the world, we can point to fat women who engage in activism related to body politics and more. Australian fat filmmaker and activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater makes documentaries, such as Aquaporko! and Nothing to Lose, that queer fat embodiment and confronts body norms. Newly elected Ontario MPP Jill Andrew has been fighting for equal rights for queer people and fat people in Canada for decades. Nigerian Latasha Ngwube founded About That Curvy Life, Africa’s leading body positive and empowerment site, and has organised plus-size fashion show events at Heineken Lagos Fashion and Design Week in Nigeria in 2016 and the Glitz Africa Fashion Week in Ghana in 2017. Fat women have been putting their bodies on the line for the rights of others to live, work, and love. American Heather Heyer was protesting the hate that white nationalists represent and the danger they posed to her friends, family, and neighbours when she died at a rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina in late 2017 (Caron). When Heyer was killed by one of those white nationalists, they declared that she was fat, and therefore her body size was lauded loudly as justification for her death (Bay, “How Nazis Use”; Spangler).Fat women protesting is not new. For example, the Fat Underground was a group of “radical fat feminist women”, who split off from the more conservative NAAFA (National Association to Aid Fat Americans) in the 1970s (Simic 18). The group educated the public about weight science, harassed weight-loss companies, and disrupted academic seminars on obesity. The Fat Underground made their first public appearance at a Women’s Equality Day in Los Angeles, taking over the stage at the public event to accuse the medical profession of murdering Cass Elliot, the lead singer of the folk music group, The Mamas and the Papas (Dean and Buss). In 1973, the Fat Underground produced the Fat Liberation Manifesto. This Manifesto began by declaring that they believed “that fat people are full entitled to human respect and recognition” (Freespirit and Aldebaran 341).Women have long been disavowed, or discouraged, from participating in the public sphere (Ginzberg; van Acker) or seen as “intruders or outsiders to the tough world of politics” (van Acker 118). The feminist slogan the personal is political was intended to shed light on the role that women needed to play in the public spheres of education, employment, and government (Caha 22). Across the world, the acceptance of women within the public sphere has been varied due to cultural, political, and religious, preferences and restrictions (Agenda Feminist Media Collective). Limited acceptance of women in the public sphere has historically been granted by those ‘anointed’ by a male family member or patron (Fountaine 47).Anti-feminists are quick to disavow women being in public spaces, preferring to assign them the role as helpmeet to male political elite. As Schlafly (in Rowland 30) notes: “A Positive Woman cannot defeat a man in a wrestling or boxing match, but she can motivate him, inspire him, encourage him, teach him, restrain him, reward him, and have power over him that he can never achieve over her with all his muscle.” This idea of women working behind the scenes has been very strong in New Zealand where the ‘sternly worded’ letter is favoured over street protest. An acceptable route for women’s activism was working within existing political institutions (Grey), with activity being ‘hidden’ inside government offices such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (Schuster, 23). But women’s movement organisations that engage in even the mildest form of disruptive protest are decried (Grey; van Acker).One way women have been accepted into public space is as the moral guardians or change agents of the entire political realm (Bliss; Ginzberg; van Acker; Ledwith). From the early suffrage movements both political actors and media representations highlighted women were more principled and conciliatory than men, and in many cases had a moral compass based on restraint. Cartoons showed women in the suffrage movement ‘sweeping up’ and ‘cleaning house’ (Sheppard 123). Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were celebrated for protesting against the demon drink and anti-pornography campaigners like Patricia Bartlett were seen as acceptable voices of moral reason (Moynihan). And as Cunnison and Stageman (in Ledwith 193) note, women bring a “culture of femininity to trade unions … an alternative culture, derived from the particularity of their lives as women and experiences of caring and subordination”. This role of moral guardian often derived from women as ‘mothers’, responsible for the physical and moral well-being of the nation.The body itself has been a sight of protest for women including fights for bodily autonomy in their medical decisions, reproductive justice, and to live lives free from physical and sexual abuse, have long been met with criticisms of being unladylike or inappropriate. Early examples decried in NZ include the women’s clothing movement which formed part of the suffrage movement. In the second half of the 20th century it was the freedom trash can protests that started the myth of ‘women burning their bras’ which defied acceptable feminine norms (Sawer and Grey). Recent examples of women protesting for body rights include #MeToo and Time’s Up. Both movements protest the lack of bodily autonomy women can assert when men believe they are entitled to women’s bodies for their entertainment, enjoyment, and pleasure. And both movements have received considerable backlash by those who suggest it is a witch hunt that might ensnare otherwise innocent men, or those who are worried that the real victims are white men who are being left behind (see Garber; Haussegger). Women who advocate for bodily autonomy, including access to contraception and abortion, are often held up as morally irresponsible. As Archdeacon Bullock (cited in Smyth 55) asserted, “A woman should pay for her fun.”Many individuals believe that the stigma and discrimination fat people face are the consequences they sow from their own behaviours (Crandall 892); that fat people are fat because they have made poor decisions, being too indulgent with food and too lazy to exercise (Crandall 883). Therefore, fat people, like women, should have to pay for their fun. Fat women find themselves at this intersection, and are often judged more harshly for their weight than fat men (Tiggemann and Rothblum). Examining Coulter’s tweet with this perspective in mind, it can easily be read as an attempt to put fat girl protestors back into their place. It can also be read as a warning. Don’t go making too much noise or you may be labelled as fat. Presenting troublesome women as fat has a long history within political art and depictions. Marianne (the symbol of the French Republic) was depicted as fat and ugly; she also reinforced an anti-suffragist position (Chenut 441). These images are effective because of our societal views on fatness (Kyrölä). Fatness is undesirable, unworthy of love and attention, and a representation of poor character, lack of willpower, and an absence of discipline (Murray 14; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 1).Fat women who protest transgress rules around body size, gender norms, and the appropriate place for women in society. Take as an example the experiences of one of the authors of this piece, Sandra Grey, who was thrust in to political limelight nationally with the Campaign for MMP (Grey and Fitzsimmons) and when elected as the President of the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union in 2011. Sandra is a trade union activist who breaches too many norms set for the “good woman protestor,” as well as the norms for being a “good fat woman”. She looms large on a stage – literally – and holds enough power in public protest to make a crowd of 7,000 people “jump to left”, chant, sing, and march. In response, some perceive Sandra less as a tactical and strategic leader of the union movement, and more as the “jolly fat woman” who entertains, MCs, and leads public events. Though even in this role, she has been criticised for being too loud, too much, too big.These criticisms are loudest when Sandra is alongside other fat female bodies. When posting on social media photos with fellow trade union members the comments often note the need of the group to “go on a diet”. The collective fatness also brings comments about “not wanting to fuck any of that group of fat cows”. There is something politically and socially dangerous about fat women en masse. This was behind the responses to Sandra’s first public appearance as the President of TEU when one of the male union members remarked “Clearly you have to be a fat dyke to run this union.” The four top elected and appointed positions in the TEU have been women for eight years now and both their fatness and perceived sexuality present as a threat in a once male-dominated space. Even when not numerically dominant, unions are public spaces dominated by a “masculine culture … underpinned by the undervaluation of ‘women’s worth’ and notions of womanhood ‘defined in domesticity’” (Cockburn in Kirton 273-4). Sandra’s experiences in public space show that the derision and methods of putting fat girls back in their place varies dependent on whether the challenge to power is posed by a single fat body with positional power and a group of fat bodies with collective power.Fat Girls Are the FutureOn the other side of the world, Tara Vilhjálmsdóttir is protesting to change the law in Iceland. Tara believes that fat people should be protected against discrimination in public and private settings. Using social media such as Facebook and Instagram, Tara takes her message, and her activism, to her thousands of followers (Keller, 434; Pausé, “Rebel Heart”). And through mainstream media, she pushes back on fatphobia rhetoric and applies pressure on the government to classify weight as a protected status under the law.After a lifetime of living “under the oppression of diet culture,” Tara began her activism in 2010 (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She had suffered real harm from diet culture, developing an eating disorder as a teen and being told through her treatment for it that her fears as a fat woman – that she had no future, that fat people experienced discrimination and stigma – were unfounded. But Tara’s lived experiences demonstrated fat stigma and discrimination were real.In 2012, she co-founded the Icelandic Association for Body Respect, which promotes body positivity and fights weight stigma in Iceland. The group uses a mixture of real life and online tools; organising petitions, running campaigns against the Icelandic version of The Biggest Loser, and campaigning for weight to be a protected class in the Icelandic constitution. The Association has increased the visibility of the dangers of diet culture and the harm of fat stigma. They laid the groundwork that led to changing the human rights policy for the city of Reykjavík; fat people cannot be discriminated against in employment settings within government jobs. As the city is one of the largest employers in the country, this was a large step forward for fat rights.Tara does receive her fair share of hate messages; she’s shared that she’s amazed at the lengths people will go to misunderstand what she is saying (Vilhjálmsdóttir). “This isn’t about hurt feelings; I’m not insulted [by fat stigma]. It’s about [fat stigma] affecting the livelihood of fat people and the structural discrimination they face” (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She collects the hateful comments she receives online through screenshots and shares them in an album on her page. She believes it is important to keep a repository to demonstrate to others that the hatred towards fat people is real. But the hate she receives only fuels her work more. As does the encouragement she receives from people, both in Iceland and abroad. And she is not alone; fat activists across the world are using Web 2.0 tools to change the conversation around fatness and demand civil rights for fat people (Pausé, “Rebel Heart”; Pausé, “Live to Tell").Using Web 2.0 tools as a way to protest and engage in activism is an example of oppositional technologics; a “political praxis of resistance being woven into low-tech, amateur, hybrid, alternative subcultural feminist networks” (Garrison 151). Fat activists use social media to engage in anti-assimilationist activism and build communities of practice online in ways that would not be possible in real life (Pausé, “Express Yourself” 1). This is especially useful for those whose protests sit at the intersections of oppressions (Keller 435; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 19). Online protests have the ability to travel the globe quickly, providing opportunities for connections between protests and spreading protests across the globe, such as SlutWalks in 2011-2012 (Schuster 19). And online spaces open up unlimited venues for women to participate more freely in protest than other forms (Harris 479; Schuster 16; Garrison 162).Whether online or offline, women are represented as dangerous in the political sphere when they act without male champions breaching norms of femininity, when their involvement challenges the role of woman as moral guardians, and when they make the body the site of protest. Women must ‘do politics’ politely, with utmost control, and of course caringly; that is they must play their ‘designated roles’. Whether or not you fit the gendered norms of political life affects how your protest is perceived through the media (van Acker). Coulter’s tweet loudly proclaimed that the fat ‘girls’ protesting the election of the 45th President of the United States were unworthy, out of control, and not worthy of attention (ironic, then, as her tweet caused considerable conversation about protest, fatness, and the reasons not to like the President-Elect). 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